John R. Neill

John Rea Neill (November 12, 1877 – September 19, 1943) was a magazine and children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty books set in the Land of Oz, including L. Frank Baum's, Ruth Plumly Thompson's, and three of his own.^[1] His pen-and-ink drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz series. He also illustrated many magazine and newspaper stories, which are not as well known.

John R. Neill
Born	John Rea Neill (1877-11-12)November 12, 1877 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Died	September 13, 1943(1943-09-13) (aged 65) Flanders, New Jersey, US
Occupation	Illustrator
Notable work	Land of Oz

Early life

Neill was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Neill’s father, Robert Rea Neill, was born in Ireland in 1845, and came to the United States when he was 17. Neill’s mother, Mary, was born in Nyack, New York in 1847. Robert and Mary wed in 1870; they had eight children. They settled in the Bella Vista area of Philadelphia. Robert ran a neighborhood laundry. Neill’s father died when Neill was 10.^[2][3]

John R. Neill did his first illustration work for the Philadelphia's Central High School newspaper and yearbook in 1894–95. Neill then enrolled in Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but left after one semester, purportedly saying, "They have nothing to teach me". He was 18.^[4]

In 1900 he settled in Brooklyn, New York. He was hired by The New York Evening Journal, where he met the artist Joseph Clement Coll.^[5]

He moved back to Philadelphia in 1901, and was hired by The Philadelphia Public Ledger. He married Bessie Barrows in Philadelphia on October 7, 1902.^[6] He then turned to advertising art for the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. In 1904, he became a staff artist of the Philadelphia North American newspaper, where he met L. Frank Baum, and he produced features including the comics strip Toyland, illustrations for the serialization of 'The Fate of a Crown' (a book by L. Frank Baum), Children's Stories That Never Grow Old, and the Sunday comics page 'The Little Journeys of Nip and Tuck' with verses by W.R. Bradford (1909–1910).^[7][8]

He was first commissioned to illustrate The Marvelous Land of Oz, the second Oz book L. Frank Baum wrote, published in 1904. For each Oz book, Baum's publishers would send Neill the manuscript, and Neill would work on the illustrations in a studio in Lumberville, Pennsylvania.^[9]

He and Margaret Carroll, an actress, were wed in 1919. She gave birth to three children, and they moved to Kensington Gardens, on Long Island, New York. They bought a farm in Flanders, New Jersey, where they lived for almost a decade, before Neill died of a heart ailment.^[10]

The first Oz book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, had been illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Baum and Denslow shared the copyright for books they worked on, and the musical The Wizard of Oz, (based on the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), but after they argued over royalties for the musical, they parted ways.^[11][12]

John R. Neill's artwork for the cover of The Royal Book of Oz (1921)

Career

Originally, Neill's illustrations were slightly reminiscent of Denslow's to bring continuity and familiarity to the characters, although Neill's work in this period was far more reminiscent of the work of his contemporary and friend, illustrator Joseph Clement Coll. Denslow's illustrations had been quite popular. However, as the series expanded, Neill brought his own unique flair to the illustrations, showing more artistic representations of the characters as well as beautiful paintings of numerous scenes. He was later named the Imperial Illustrator of Oz.

Neill's illustrations were published in the leading magazines of the first few decades of the twentieth century, including Collier's, Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies Home Journal, Century, Pictorial Review, The Delineator, Boys' Life, St. Nicholas, The People's Home Journal, Adventure ^[13] and many others. In 1930 and 1931, he contributed a great deal of artwork to Argosy.

Dorothy

John R. Neill's depiction of Dorothy in The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

Dorothy drawn by Denslow appeared to be a chubby five- or six-year-old with long brown hair in two thick braids that remained untied at the ends. Neill chose to illustrate a new Dorothy in 1907 when the character was reintroduced in Ozma of Oz. He illustrated the young girl in a more fashionable appearance. She is shown to be about ten years old, dressed in contemporary American fashions, with blonde hair cut in a fashionable bob. A similar modernization was given to other female characters.

Oz work

Neill continued to illustrate the Oz books after Baum's death. His artwork was praised for helping to give Ruth Plumly Thompson's books "legitimacy" in the eyes of Baum's fans. Neill would eventually succeed Thompson as the designated "Oz historian" and write several books himself.

The Wonder City of Oz, The Scalawagons of Oz, and Lucky Bucky in Oz, which debuted each year from 1940 to 1942, were written by Neill for the firm of Reilly & Lee and are considered part of the Famous Forty. His last work, The Runaway in Oz, was drafted before his death, but the full illustrations were never finished and Reilly & Lee decided not to publish the manuscript. However, Neill's widow kept the manuscript safe, and, in 1995, it was finally published by Books of Wonder and edited and illustrated by Eric Shanower. The book's design reproduces the design used throughout almost all of the Baum, Thompson, and Neill Oz books (without the color plates), and the story itself follows the adventures of the Patchwork Girl with some new characters invented by Neill.

Dorothy and Ozma by John. R. Neill (1908)

Non-Oz work

Illustration by John R. Neill for the story "An Actor's Love Story" written by R. Connell, published in Pictorial Review magazine

Neill illustrated dozens of books that were not written by Baum.^[14] One of the most notable of Neill's non-Baum books was his adaptation of Helen Bannerman's 1899 story, Little Black Sambo. Neill's edition of Little Black Sambo, which was published by Reilly and Britton in 1908, included a short story called "The Story of Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin."^[15][16]

Legacy

In 2018, "The Lost Art of Oz" project was initiated to locate and catalogue the surviving original artwork John R. Neill, W.W. Denslow, Frank Kramer, Richard 'Dirk' Gringhuis and Dick Martin created to illustrate the Oz book series.^[17]